A variety of mobile-based services exist in the industry for users and businesses to: obtain information, perform transactions, watch entertainment, and socialize with business associates, friends, and family members.
Enterprises have been leveraging the environment to provide a variety of automated services to customers. One recent development, is a frictionless store in which a customer can enter a store and shop without ever accessing any electronic device and without interacting with a clerk to checkout of the store with purchased items. This computer vision based technology is on the rise for other reasons as well, such as inventor management and theft prevention.
One problem with the frictionless store is when two or more individuals cross paths with one another or are in the same field of view of the video cameras, such that the two individuals appear to intersect within the store at a same physical location.
In fact, in some situations an image of one individual may block the image of another individual. Again, this can happen when the two individuals are in close proximity to one another or when there is a substantial distance between the two individuals with one individual being closer to the camera so as the two images from the camera appears to depict the individuals in close physical proximity to one another. The issue is further exacerbated when the two individuals are both actually in close physical proximity to one another and both are also in close proximity to the camera, in such a circumstance the two individuals appear as a single individual to the camera and the farthest individual appears to be missing from the field of view of the camera.
The problems with discerning intersecting individuals within a frictionless store becomes conflated when more than two individuals appear to intersect in the field of view of a camera and when the frictionless store is experiencing heavy customer traffic.